Mississippi's Commissioner Dale Loses Primary

George Dale, Mississippi's insurance commissioner for 32 years, was defeated in a Democratic primary, losing to a government relations political consultant by a close vote.

Gary Anderson won the election on Tuesday, receiving 51 percent of the vote to Mr. Dale's 49 percent.

Mr. Anderson will face Republican challenger Mike Cheney in November.

In 2003, Mr. Anderson ran unsuccessfully for Mississippi State Treasurer. Prior to that, he served as Mississippi's Chief Fiscal Officer from 2000-2003. He has also worked as a banker.

Mr. Dale took office in 1976 and will serve out his term until January 2008. He is the longest-serving elected Mississippi official, he said, and the longest-serving insurance commissioner.

In an interview with National Underwriter, Mr. Dale discussed the primary election, saying he would not run as an independent candidate because "the people have spoken."

"Katrina did hurt me," he said. However, he maintains "the interesting thing is that we didn't get killed on the Gulf Coast" even with unfavorable publicity. Mr. Dale said he garnered 40 percent of the vote there, usually receiving 60 percent of the vote in the past.

Since Katrina, $11.9 billion in claims have been paid out in the state, Mr. Dale said, with $8.2 billion of that total paid on coastal claims.

Mr. Dale criticized the television campaign against him (see HYPERLINK "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgsraseRlbs" www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgsraseRlbs and HYPERLINK "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRHuJgOfwvY&mode=related&search" www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRHuJgOfwvY&mode=related&search), stating that "a lot of liberty was taken with issues."

He said it is not true that he was indicted for bribery, as stated in the campaign ads. He added that a pledge made by Mr. Anderson not to take campaign money from insurers was more the result of his not being able to get company contributions.

When asked if he had taken over $200,000 from the industry, Mr. Dale said he had "probably taken more," but that many of the contributions were from individual agents exercising their constitutional right to make campaign donations.

Mr. Dale's candidate report form, stamped received on July 31, 2007, shows itemized contributions of $171,798 and nonitemized contributions of $41,112, and a year-to-date total of $348,160. Contributions were a mix of individual donations, donations from insurance agencies and insurance companies as well as a $5,000 July 12 contribution from Douglas Sizemore, former Tennessee insurance commissioner.

When you are an incumbent, Mr. Dale said, people will always find fault with the commissioner's relationship with the industry; and when the price of insurance increases, "consumers are buying an intangible product. They get mad about [the increase]."

Mr. Dale also spoke of the changes he has seen in the insurance industry since he started in 1976. The issues have become more complex, he said. He noted that there is more attention paid to solvency issues and efforts by the states to become more uniform in their actions as the federal government looks at insurance regulation.

Reached by National Underwriter, Mr. Anderson said Mississippi has the third highest insurance rates, according to a report of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, based in Kansas City, Mo. Making all insurance more affordable is particularly important to him because Mississippi ranks 50th in per capita income, and voters are concerned about the cost of health and property-casualty insurance.

"Katrina did expose the weaknesses in depending on the Department of Insurance to regulate the industry in our state," he said. Rates were high before Katrina, Mr. Anderson noted, and "Katrina is not to blame for the rise in premiums."

Companies need to stand behind their promises to pay claims, he said. Mr. Anderson asserted he is not anti-company, adding that he wants companies to do business in Mississippi. For that reason, he stated, he has taken a pledge not to take money from insurers. He said it is a matter of "good business and not cozy relations. It is business, not just nodding and winking and all of that."

Mr. Anderson's candidate report form, filed on July 31, 2007, shows itemized contributions of $131,150 and nonitemized contributions of $10,969 for a total of $142,119 in the reporting period. Year-to-date contributions totaled $280,312.

Mr. Anderson received $2,000 in campaign funding from Democracy for America, based in Burlington, Vt., a political action committee inspired by the presidential campaign of Howard Dean and headed by Mr. Dean's brother James. The group "supports fiscally responsible, socially progressive candidates at all levels of government," according to its Web site.

Mr. Anderson said that everything his campaign ran in his ads was "100 percent factual."

For instance, he said the 29 percent rate increase granted companies referenced in his television ads was actually on the low end of the spectrum, and some increases granted were 70-to-80 percent. He referenced an article he said ran in the Clarion-Ledger.

In response to a question about criticism waged at his campaign for taking contributions from Richard Scruggs, a noted trial lawyer involved in much of the Hurricane Katrina litigation, Mr. Anderson said Mr. Scruggs "did not give my campaign a dime." He also said the industry has funded efforts to stop citizen lawsuits and that he was outspent in the primary by $3-to-$1.

In Mr. Anderson's 2004 bid for State Treasurer, Mr. Scruggs is listed as contributing $25,000, according to a candidate report dated Jan. 23, 2004.

Mr. Scruggs announced on July 31 in a statement on the Web site "A.M. in the Morning" that he had contributed $250,000 to Mississippians for Fair Elections. The group ran at least one campaign ad criticizing Mr. Dale.

In his statement, Mr. Scruggs said: "The amount I have contributed may seem like a lot of money. But it is nothing in comparison to the millions that insurance companies are refusing to pay to help Mississippians rebuild their homes and businesses or the millions big insurance pays to influence politicians at the expense of homeowners."

(Jim Connolly is senior editor for NU Life & Health magazine)